Tina Chang’s work spoke most wildly to me. I really enjoyed her use of imagery and holistic connection with emphasis on the body, which brought in emotion and mind. Her poems were very tactile and visceral, allowing me to feel physically and mentally the process described, the smells, and sensations to the places and things spotlighted in her work. Her poem Invention makes many of these connections through the land of Taiwan being correlated to a body, beginning with the image of a dead animal roadside, personifying the emotions it expresses, and the deterioration of the flesh through the sun. “It is mangled by four o’clock…eyes still watchful, savage (pg. 31).” This connection with the “bruised” Taiwanese landscape, “black and blue. On its coastline mussels have cracked”, creates imagery of a brutal and melancholy time and place. Through this connection between the animal and the landscape, placing it specifically in Taiwan, Chang makes Diaspora connections. She takes the nature and place and specifics it to a location through which she is connected to the land and people. She ends the piece focusing back on the dead animal “eyes open eyes open” where the animal has been left by the side of the watching that which changes.

My favorite piece by Chang is Fish Story mainly for the part:

“The blade and the quick gutting,
the aroma of yourself frying in a smoky haze,
your body covered with radishes and leafy greens.
This activity of eating brains is real (pg. 33).”

Again, for me, this piece is very holistic, in that the body, emotion, and mind are connected through the use of her words. She connects to nature through the identification with the fish, and its experience from being caught to eaten. I feel as an amateur of literature and poetry analysis unsure how to break down the context of her poem and reveal how the use of animals and landscape reference the natural and place more intimately. Yet, I can clearly see how within Chang's poems, there is a theme of the natural and how that pertains to her identity as an Asian American woman, how it pertains to her connection to Taiwan, and how all of these elements come together to create a picture of Chang's vision.